Us v. Them: A Romney/Ryan Modus Operandi Rolls Out

Well, we're a few days into the Vultures And Vouchers Tour Of The Americas '12, and things are not working out quite the way Willard Romney planned when he concluded the sublet of his luxurious belfry to the bats of his party's base. First, the Gallup Poll demonstrated that a great swath of Americans have managed to remain ignorant of Paul Ryan's plans to create the United States Of Mississippi, and that the people who know something about it, and him, don't like zombie-eyed granny-starving very much. One indication of a deeper problem might be that, down in Florida, Governor Rick Scott, whose company got rich scamming Medicare, is running away from Ryan's plan to chloroform the program. (Maybe Governor Bat Boy looks at the general privatization of the program as cutting into the profits, the way that marijuana kingpins are opposed to legalization.) Romney could have chatted this up personally with Bat Boy, but he begged off a trip to Orlando, pleading, originally, exhaustion, lest a group of grannies confront him with their disinclination to be starved by his running mate.

(And, of course, once again evincing the political dexterity that has been a hallmark of the entire effort, the Romney campaign tied its own dick in a bowline trying to walk this back when they realized how silly it sounded.)

Out on the hustings, with his usual tactic of charging people 15 clams if they want to yell at him denied to him this time around, the zombie-eyed granny-starver got himself heckled pretty seriously at the Iowa State Fair by people with fried Oreos on their breath. Watch him carefully, though, because you're going to be seeing a lot of this, because this is a guy with a jaw of pure Waterford crystal. The hecklers get on him. He starts talking about their manners. The cops come in and protect him from actual voters and not until the hecklers are hustled away do we get the big shit-eating grin and the oily Nixonian attempts at identifying with the audience by suggesting that those people are "not from Iowa or Wisconsin."

This is the modus operandi. Throw the "civility" fish into the Beltway media seal tank for people to applaud, using, at all time, the "Soulful" setting on your zombie eyes, and then make a cheap dive for the more immediate audience's emotional G spot by setting yourself up as part of Us, as opposed to the unruly Them. Here's another example, from an old town-hall meeting, where the local law manages to subdue a septuagenarian and, once he knows he's safe from the wrath of the elderly, Ryan makes a tinpot joke about the guy's medication. (He saves the real poison for the people he trusts.) I watched The Trick for years, boyo. He was a master at this tradecraft, and I know what you're up to here. Not even your attempts to be an obsequious asshat are "bold" or "original."

Meanwhile, back in the world of ideas, where Paul Ryan goes out before dawn on his bicycle, rooting through the recycling bins lined up along the curb, David Stockman, of all people, the man who 'fessed up to Bill Greider what a sham Ronald Reagan's first budget was, has taken to the pages of The New York Timesto call Ryan on the long con that is his entire career.

In short, Mr. Ryan's plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn't pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation's fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity just empty sermons.

C'mon, David, tell it for what it is: "a Trojan Horse to bring down the top rate." That's still your greatest line.

This morning, I saw obvious anagram Reince Priebus on with my man Chuck Todd, and they were discussing the upcoming Republican hootenanny down in Tampa, and Reince was saying that the convention was going to dedicate itself to telling the inspiring story about how Mitt Romney battled the adversity of having a family fortune and somehow managed to become immeasurably wealthy. It is, as Reince said, an "incredible story." Later, we learned that Chris Christie, the Jersey Barrier himself, is going to haul his not-inconsiderable gravitational field to the podium to give the keynote address. I am not clairvoyant, but I don't think I'm out of line in suggesting that, by selecting Christie as your main speaker — and, perhaps, by salting the audience with some 50-year-old public school teachers for him to insult — Reince is not exactly setting up a convention of great civility and rhetorical uplift, no matter how inspiring he finds Willard Romney's rise from the mean streets of Bloomfield Hills.

Because, here's the thing: This entire past five days has been all about the fact that, as we've said a great many times here before, there is simply no Republican establishment anymore. Reince Priebus couldn't be more of a figurehead if you hung him off the bow of the Pequod. A large part of the decision on who his running mate was going to be was completely out of the candidate's hands. The vice-presidential candidate has a power base within the party completely independent of anyone else's control. (This, of course, started with the elevation of Sarah Palin last time.) The really big money responds to no imperatives but its own. Nobody's on the reservation any more.

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